


How Watson weaned Holmes from drugs

by Sherloki1854



Series: Johnlock in the original canon [7]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Drug Addiction, M/M, Meta, seven per cent solution, subtext analysis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-16 11:08:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4623057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sherloki1854/pseuds/Sherloki1854
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That Sherlock Holmes takes drugs or has taken them is the one fact all people who have ever heard of him seem to know. <br/>But when and why exactly does he depend on drugs, and how does he win against his addiction? <br/>Might have something to do with a certain doctor. :) <br/>(NB: Nothing of this is actually new. I simply wanted to see what there is on drugs in the canon and try to sort it.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Watson weaned Holmes from drugs

**A Study in Scarlet (1881), chapter 2**

_[F]or days on end he would lie upon the sofa in the sitting-room, hardly uttering a word or moving a muscle from morning to night. On these occasions I have noticed such a dreamy, vacant expression in his eyes, that I might have suspected him of being addicted to the use of some narcotic, had not the temperance and cleanliness of his whole life forbidden such a notion._

In the beginning, just after having met Watson, Holmes does not have a very active practice yet. In the first week of living with Watson, he does not even leave the house or have a single client. The second week brings clients, but it can still safely be said that Holmes does not have enough material to go on to keep his mind challenged. From the description Watson gives it should be logical that anyone with eyes would notice that Holmes is prone to taking drugs, but Watson does his best not to notice. He is a doctor. He really should notice. But something in him refuses to acknowledge a “negative” trait in Holmes. Well, sweet.

 

**The Five Orange Pips (November 1887) (November 1891)**

_"Yes," I answered, laughing. "It was a singular document. Philosophy, astronomy, and politics were marked at zero, I remember. Botany variable, geology profound as regards the mud-stains from any region within fifty miles of town, chemistry eccentric, anatomy unsystematic, sensational literature and crime records unique, violin-player, boxer, swordsman, lawyer, and self-poisoner by cocaine and tobacco. Those, I think, were the main points of my analysis."_

I will not emphasise the fact that six years after the event both Holmes and Watson still remember that trivial conversation absolutely perfectly. However, the “cocaine and tobacco” bit is not in the list Watson will later publish. This can mean two things: either he realised that Holmes was an addict early on and just did not want to stress it to the public in his published version of A Study in Scarlet, or he is adding them here to “subtly” remind Holmes of the fact that he ought not to “poison” himself even though the cases are not exactly flocking in at the moment, as no account has been published yet and therefore Holmes is not as famous as he has to be to get more work. Both possibilities would explain why a doctor supposedly did not notice that his flatmate was on drugs. Which is unbelievably unlikely. Anyway, what Watson says is more serious than he would like to make it appear to the reader. But Watson is not really concerned yet, I think. Or the “joke” would forbid itself.

 

**The Yellow Face (early spring 1888) (1893)**

_Save for the occasional use of cocaine, he had no vices, and he only turned to the drug as a protest against the monotony of existence when cases were scanty and the papers uninteresting._

A few months later, he is still convinced that Holmes only needs his stimulant when there is no interesting case, and I bet that the last months were pretty busy for them as A Study in Scarlet was first published in November 1887, which would have sent more clients to Holmes's doorstep, so Watson probably thinks the “dark days” are over and is able to refer to his friend's drug habit only in passing.

 

**The Sign of Four (late autumn 1888) (1890), chapter 1**

_Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantelpiece, and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case. With his long, white, nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle and rolled back his left shirtcuff. For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and wrist, all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture-marks. Finally, he thrust the sharp point home, pressed down the tiny piston, and sank back into the velvet-lined armchair with a long sigh of satisfaction._

_Three times a day for many months I had witnessed this performance, but custom had not reconciled my mind to it. On the contrary, from day to day I had become more irritable at the sight, and my conscience swelled nightly within me at the thought that I had lacked the courage to protest. Again and again I had registered a vow that I should deliver my soul upon the subject; but there was that in the cool, nonchalant air of my companion which made him the last man with whom one would care to take anything approaching to a liberty. His great powers, his masterly manner, and the experience which I had had of his many extraordinary qualities, all made me diffident and backward in crossing him._

_Yet upon that afternoon, whether it was the Beaune which I had taken with my lunch or the additional exasperation produced by the extreme deliberation of his manner, I suddenly felt that I could hold out no longer._

_"Which is it to-day," I asked, "morphine or cocaine?"_

_He raised his eyes languidly from the old black-letter volume which he had opened._

_"It is cocaine," he said, "a seven-per-cent solution. Would you care to try it?"_

_"No, indeed," I answered brusquely. "My constitution has not got over the Afghan campaign yet. I cannot afford to throw any extra strain upon it."_

_He smiled at my vehemence. "Perhaps you are right, Watson," he said. "I suppose that its influence is physically a bad one. I find it, however, so transcendently stimulating and clarifying to the mind that its secondary action is a matter of small moment."_

_"But consider!" I said earnestly. "Count the cost! Your brain may, as you say, be roused and excited, but it is a pathological and morbid process which involves increased tissue-change and may at least leave a permanent weakness. You know, too, what a black reaction comes upon you. Surely the game is hardly worth the candle. Why should you, for a mere passing pleasure, risk the loss of those great powers with which you have been endowed? Remember that I speak not only as one comrade to another but as a medical man to one for whose constitution he is to some extent answerable."_

It seems that his practice has not taken off yet, or that it has lapsed after the “hype” after the publication of the first account. Watson's attitude has changed completely: far from seeing Holmes's use of drugs as an occasional occurrence only and taking it quite lightly, as he did before, he is now seriously concerned and unwilling that this should go on even one more day. Watson's vehemence is anachronistic: after all, it was perfectly legal to take drugs, and it is not like Holmes was spending all his time in disreputable opium dens. Watson is concerned for Holmes's physical and mental health here, as he has finally understood that Holmes is an addict (“three times a day for as many months”, not only sometimes), and not his reputation, which is the only possible explanation for the inclusion of this long scene about the drugs. Holmes, being Holmes, repeats his usual defence, but Watson does not believe it any more, and after the argument he is frustrated and angry at Holmes. It is not a coincidence, in my mind, that he will literally throw himself at the first client after this scene: enter his “love at first sight”, Mary Morstan. Or did Watson make up this “sweet” character as a antipole to the “cruel” Holmes he sees at the moment?

 

**The Sign of Four (1887), chapter 12**

_"The division seems rather unfair," I remarked. "You have done all the work in this business. I get a wife out of it, Jones gets the credit, pray what remains for you?"_

_"For me," said Sherlock Holmes, "there still remains the cocaine-bottle." And he stretched his long white hand up for it._

Ok, Watson has decided to leave Holmes (either he is really going to marry, or he needs some space, you choose), and it is quite sad to see that Holmes's only way of escape are narcotics to numb the pain (reminds anyone of HLV?). A pity that the narrative stops here...

 

**A Scandal in Bohemia (March 1889) (1891)**

_I had seen little of Holmes lately. My marriage had drifted us away from each other. My own complete happiness, and the home-centred interests which rise up around the man who first finds himself master of his own establishment, were sufficient to absorb all my attention; while Holmes, who loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker-street, buried among his old books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen nature._

[…]

_He had risen out of his drug-created dreams_

First of all, as it has been pointed out before, Watson sounds far too happy to actually be it. It is a known fact that Watson likes to convince himself of it, and what does “my own complete happiness” sound like, exactly? It is just slightly unnatural, and not Watson's genuine style. Anyway, Watson is still using the antipoles of “my sweet wife” and “Holmes on drugs”. It is also rather interesting to note that although Watson has not seen him since the marriage (let us just take his word for that, and not go into other theories now), he yet knows exactly what state Holmes is likely to be in, i.e. in a “drug-created dream”. Apart from the fact that Watson has been pondering over Holmes's state of mind while supposedly living a happy life at his new home with his newlywed wife, this also tells us that Holmes really did turn to drugs as soon as Watson left.

 

**The Man With the Twisted Lip (June 1889) (1891)**

“ _I suppose, Watson,” said he, “that you imagine that I have added opium-smoking to cocaine injections, and all the other little weaknesses on which you have favoured me with your medical views.”_

The situation appears to have changed dramatically over the past few months. Not only has Mary Morstan pretty much disappeared (Watson essentially flees from her in this story in order to sleep in a “double-bedded [single] room” with Holmes), but Holmes's practice is apparently going well. He does not need the drug at the moment, and to reassure his Watson, Holmes starts joking about it in addition to implying that he greatly values Watson's skill/knowledge as a doctor. Which can only signify that they have managed to get over the fight of The Sign of Four.

NB: we will not hear anything about drugs any more until after Holmes's return. This story was published in late 1891, several months after Holmes's “death”. I do not know what to make of this yet.

 

**The Missing Three-Quarter (1896)**

_Things had indeed been very slow with us, and I had learned to dread such periods of inaction, for I knew by experience that my companion's brain was so abnormally active that it was dangerous to leave it without material upon which to work. For years I had gradually weaned him from that drug mania which had threatened once to check his remarkable career. Now I knew that under ordinary conditions he no longer craved for this artificial stimulus, but I was well aware that the fiend was not dead, but sleeping; and I have known that the sleep was a light one and the waking near when in periods of idleness I have seen the drawn look upon Holmes's ascetic face, and the brooding of his deep-set and inscrutable eyes. Therefore I blessed this Mr. Overton, whoever he might be, since he had come with his enigmatic message to break that dangerous calm which brought more peril to my friend than all the storms of his tempestuous life._

As said above, this story is set in 1896. It was published after Holmes's retirement to Sussex, maybe including this passage as an admonition to remind him of the fact that Watson strongly opposes this habit (and that it would the latter's heart if Holmes started taking them again, in my opinion). But what is really interesting in this only direct reference to Holmes's drug habit after his return is that Watson speaks of “years” which he spent weaning Holmes from his addiction. Wait a second, when? He takes drugs after Watson's marriage, which means that the only “years” in question are 1889 to 1895. Watson was married from 1889 to at least 1891, and even if you do not subscribe to that theory, there are cases set in that time, so Holmes and Watson could not have gone somewhere to get Holmes to abandon his habit, which leaves only the years after 1891 – that is, the hiatus. The theory that Holmes and Watson faked the whole thing and then retired to the country to wean Holmes from the drugs is about as old as The Empty House.

Yet not all is well, and Watson still fears the ghosts of the past...

 

Conclusion:

Pre-Watson in 1881: Holmes does take drugs, but only occasionally.

1881 – early 1888: Still occasionally, at least not often enough for Watson to really worry.

Mid-1888 – spring 1889: Holmes takes drugs, first to escape boredom, which makes Watson distance himself from him, and then to escape the pain after Watson has indeed put a distance between them (regardless of which theory on Mary you favour)

Summer 1889 – 1891: Assuming that Moriarty is real, I would tend to think that Holmes is not taking drugs during this time as he cannot complain about lack of stimulus or clients, Watson having started publishing and Moriarty being delightfully interesting (if dangerous).

1891 – 1894: The hiatus. It might be that Holmes and Watson spent that time together to fight the addiction, and when they felt secure that they had it under control, they finally returned to London. This also fits in with the dates of the short stories that mention drugs set prior to Holmes's return: Watson certainly had the drugs in his mind at that time and maybe even used the accounts he published to remind Holmes of fighting on...

Post-hiatus: The fiend is not dead but sleeping. And yet, we only get one relapse (Holmes in The Three Gables is completely bizarre at best), and even that is not canonically confirmed.

So, summing up: It's incredibly sweet that Holmes has his worst period when left by Watson, and that Watson probably went into hiding for years to help Holmes, and that together they prevailed in the end...

 


End file.
